Quotes About Editing

Edit more, my mantra.

Be careful that what you write does not offend anybody or cause problems within the company. The safest approach is to remove all useful information

As it turns out, business writing is all about getting to the point and leaving out all of the noise. You think you already do that in your writing, but you probably don't. Consider

The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.

The book really comes to life in the rewriting.

The writer's life is a life of revisions.

My whole life is a movie. It's just that there are no dissolves. I have to live every agonizing moment of it. My life needs editing.

I can imagine few worse fates than walking around for the rest of one's life wearing a typo.

I know many writers who first dictate passages, then polish what they have dictated. I speak, then I polish - occasionally I do windows.

Allowing artist-illustrators to control the design and content of statistical graphics is almost like allowing typographers to control the content, style, and editing of prose.

Become a motivator of writing, not the butcher of it; similarly, become an editor, not the copy editor.

The mostly, copy edits of copy editors fail to qualify the language, and grammar standards since the copy editors, even change the writing style of the authors; it falls under censorship and destruction of opinion.

Whatever subject stays in the process of editing and copy editing by unqualified contributors every day and every time can never be reliable and notable; even one cites authentic sources. Wikipedia falls under such quality of context without a doubt.

Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.

There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.

It's not words, but years we should be editing. Remember: time spent on bad art is a form of redundancy, doing the same thing twice is a form of tautology, and wasting precious moments complaining about life is a form of pleonasm. We should all learn to live our lives concisely.

It's easier to rewrite anything, even the worst writing ever, than to write something for the first time.

I try to write 1,000 words. Some people say it's not about the quantity but about the quality. I disagree. You need to write a lot in order to figure out what's good and what's crap.

I cried most days working on the first draft. The last scenes were the hardest. I had a feeling where I wanted to end - the exact note - but I couldn't see how to get there. Sarah Murphy, my editor, asked the right questions to help me. I think of 'The Bear' as a hopeful book.

I can access footage much quicker, yes. But in terms of living with a film and knowing what's right, digital doesn't do that for you.

I don't shoot movies quickly because I get a lot of coverage and a lot of angles, so we have all the pieces in the editing. I do a lot of takes, but it's because I'm looking for something.

I draft quickly and then revise, a lot.

When I'm in full-on writing mode and have the day, I try to get in my office around 10 A.M. and stop once 'Judge Judy' comes on at 4, when I quit and come down. Sometimes, I leave her on while I edit - if she can make the tough calls, then so can I.

I film quite a bit of footage, then edit. Changes before your eyes, things you can do and things you can't. My attitude is always 'let it keep rolling.'